Guild Wars 2

Knox.8962:

Virtues has a lot of good ideas, but it kinda stumbles on itself. It’s also too support oriented. Permeating Wrath is a strong trait, but it basically keeps you from using the virtue that you’ve invested in. Shielded mind is certainly a useful trait, but the long cooldown on VoC keeps it from being the kind of trait that you really spec to get.

The support-oriented theme isn’t that bad. The problem with the Virtues trait line is that it tries to do two things that run counter to each other:
1. Improve passive virtues.
2. Effects for activating virtues, including cooldown reduction.

It would be so much better if it focused only on effects for activating virtues. The passive-only ones could be moved to a different line.

In my opinion, downed state traits have a niche use for the classes they appear on, and that’s levelling to 80 in PvE. Especially when you’ve only got 35 or so trait points. There’s a lot of mobs that can be dropped from 50% or more while downed if you’re traited for it, and that ability makes certain encounters much less scary since you can revive off a trash mob on demand.

I can’t make a case for them in any other situation though. But to me it’s enough to justify their existence, since they’re only taking up one adept slot out of six.

Exedore.6320:

The support-oriented theme isn’t that bad. The problem with the Virtues trait line is that it tries to do two things that run counter to each other:
1. Improve passive virtues.
2. Effects for activating virtues, including cooldown reduction.

It would be so much better if it focused only on effects for activating virtues. The passive-only ones could be moved to a different line.

The damage increases in the line are pretty weak. 20% increase is huge, but having Aegis up regularly is highly unusual. At 1% per boon, power of the virtuous is pretty lackluster. The other damage adders are basically more burning, which seems nice, but guardians can’t really make enough use of condition damage stats to turn those traits into significant boosts (outside of AoE farming).

I’d like to see the 25 point trait become “virtue passive effects continue while on cooldown” and make power of the virtuous into a 20 point trait, “4% (maybe 3%) damage increase for each recharging virtue.”

That gives you options to go offensive or defensive with the tree, and cleans up some of the conflicts made by the design of the tree.

My main problem right now with Guardian is that nearly every other class has gotten a HUGE amount of love since the massive nerfs that it received in beta.

Scepter needs to be fixed…just fix it. Scepter 1 still hardly hits in pvp and doesn’t count as a projectile finisher. So why exactly should it be a projectile? Make it a direct damage like necro dagger, or better yet change it to a direct damage that has a 180 range explosion on it that does torment or burning. Scepter 2’s damage is like a miniature meteor shower with mediocre damage, and scepter 3 is good (could be a 12 second CD instead of 15 imo)

Sword 2 has a 10 second cooldown and blinds with nearly no damage. Why is this? I’m guessing because guardians are apparently supposed to have zero movement whatsoever and since this provides a ‘huge’ amount of movement they felt justified in cutting all damage to it. Sword 1’s 3rd chain needs to have its damage fixed as well, only move in the game that degrades in damage as it moves higher in the chain. Sword 3…mother flippin sword 3. Its great in pve and has a pseudo use in utility (Sry I didn’t use Sword 3 to stop the unload from a thief and used dodge instead) but in pvp/wvw its complete garbage. Change it to direct damage that isn’t a projectile and it reflects projectiles so instead of saying “I’ll just dodge roll and heal after the roll” you’ll say “I’ll reflect that back in your face you kitten”

Another is the fact that we HAVE to go nearly purely defensive in pvp/wvw. We have garbage health pools, armor doesn’t mean anything anymore, and next to no mobility. I would love to test out some signets, but I can’t because I have to have my utility skills focused on keeping me alive or its one of the only ways I have any mobility.

Guardians need more ways to snare. Yes we can control the ground we fight on decently enough (unless someone has stability) but we need ways to keep people ON the ground. Guardians have ZERO stuns, I’m guessing its because the thieves stole them from us. This doesn’t make sense at all. We have no way to apply cripple, stun, or chilled unless we trait into it. What we can do is apply immobilized, but everyone else does it much better.

Why should someone even play a Guard when warriors control ground better, we do very weak damage unless the target sits in our AOEs, we can only apply one damaging condition, and everyone else has much higher mobility than we do unless we put everything into mobility and 4 classes will still have more than us with just 1 or two traits or a weapon choice. Its like the devs change something, but don’t move it to where it needs to be because ‘we don’t want Guards to be OP’ or something.

I’d have a lot more to say about traits but I’m about to go wvw. For what the OP said about traits I agree. They need to be re-worked and those are some good steps in the right direction without a whole lot of “wouldn’t it be cool if this did that?” So…strong work OP.

Totally agreed. I have just started to play Guardian about a month ago, with a friend of mine playing for quite some time now. First thing I noticed in my Guardian compared to his Warrior is how our traits arekitten*ed up. I mean, I am seeing a game for the first time, but I realized many traits are in really wrong trees, plus many of them are obsolete when it comes to use or efficiency.

Guardians just cant get efficiently specialized. Now i am new to the game, bear in mind, so I’m mainly experimenting yet, I am level 80 by now and did some PvP and PvE mandatory. My problem is most builds require something that is outside that tree, and to get to certain point or trait you need to invest for instance 10 in honor for 20% shout duration, which makes no sense to me as Healing power does nothing, and there is only 1 shout that heals :S (gives regeneration??). Shouts are mostly boons, would make much more sense in Valor. I dunno. Just seemed messed up. Glad to find you people share the same opinion.

As for useless traits Guardians can re list them over and over again. I personally think they should remake the guardian traits and specialize trees for certain areas of gameplay so we can merge styles and not separate effects. I think they wanted to make player not specialize but rather get more diverse, but the problem is now there are only a couple of viable builds even to my eye. I mean i have my own build but for a character tweek opsession freak like me there simply aint enough viable effective builds. Which is real shame, considering how fun and diverse the class actually is.

^^ Makes sense to me.

Zeal – Offensive 2h’s and Symbols
Rad – Offensive 1h’s / Signets
Valor – Med’s / AH
Honor – Healing / Symbols
Virtues – Shouts (boons) / Virtues

Clearly they tried.

Actually, the traits lines are pretty well thought-out. The guardian focuses on group-based play, so some lines are for more group with some self-benefit and others are self with some group. They also all cater to different playstyles. Some traits just aren’t good though (most of Zeal).

Scepter is pretty good as-is. If you use it long range, expect #1 to miss, just like other projectile weapons. Short range it works fine. It’s DPS is pretty high.

Sword #1 chain part 3 goes up in damage. It’s 3 attacks and each attack hits multiple enemies. However, it’s a very narrow cone with longer range compared to a wide cone at short range. I would complain about #3 on the sword not being useful except to block projectiles.

Guardian HP is pretty good even though it’s low. We have a lot of passive damage reduction and healing over time to compensate.

Guardian mobility could use a boost, I’ll agree there. But doing things other than support is very possible. It’s just not as common and the builds aren’t as obvious as support/survivability.

Amins.3710:

^^ Makes sense to me.

Zeal – Offensive 2h’s and Symbols
Rad – Offensive 1h’s / Signets
Valor – Med’s / AH
Honor – Healing / Symbols
Virtues – Shouts (boons) / Virtues

Clearly they tried.

If this was the reality i would be very happy.

Honor is healing, symbols, boons and shouts.

Virtues are about consecration, virtues, spirit weapons and boons on general.

Zeal is gs, symbols and spiritweapons.

Imo zeal and honor should have a couple of traits swapped so zeal actually is about 2h weapons and honor improves symbols.

Zeal and virtues should also have traits swapped between them so spirit weapons ended up in zeal,

I wouldnt mind if superior aria was moved valor and the mace trait moved from valor to honor.

Just examples to prove a point. I think Anet needs to streamline our traits and make the purpose of the traits to be clearer.

Compared to my necro, warrior and thief the guardians tratis isnt as organized even though i find the traits them selves to be much more thought thru.

See, I think the issue with moving shouts to valor is that valor is meant almost purely for self support/sustain, and almost anything that has to to with groups (which would be shouts) is in honor.

As far as weapon traits I think the current layout is:
Zeal: GS damage + effect /Scepter damage /focus CD
Radiance: 1h sword damage /Torch CD + effect/ 1h Crit
Valor: Hammer Effect /Mace Damage + stat boost / shield CD + stat boost
Honor: 2h Weapon CD
Virtues: None

You notice two things. There is no straight forward staff trait, and some of the traits make no sense being where they are. 2h mastery makes no sense in honor, scepter/focus make no sense in zeal, and hammer only feels like it is in valor because of the protection on symbol, but honestly that is the only real defensive thing about it.
Also, there is alot of difference between the weapon traits, as some are just Cds, some are effects, some are just damage, and some are a mix. It would be nice to have some more uniform sense of them, like how Mesmer weapon traits are, either stat + effect, or CD + effect.

Also I failed again at getting honor/virtues done, but some of the points you guys made gave me some new ideas, so expect some changes in what I have for zeal as well, Mostly trying to move weapon traits around to make zeal 2h and radiance 1h, also I have a question for you guys because its been bugging me and I cant decide on it.

Empowering might, any opinions on if it should go to zeal, radiance or stay in honor. It could make sense in all of them since zeal is about boosting damage, radiance is about crits, and honor is about group support, which EM falls under all of the criteria. However it would severely change the AH/EM build, and could possibly give way to much sustainability to a more dps spec. But yeah, any opinions.

Personally i would like both empowering might and elusive power in zeal and have the symbol tratis in zeal to be moved to honor. This would radically improve the value of zeal and make it more suitable for other weapons than scepter/gs. And at the same time make symbolbuilds and area control a very valid option. Sure its a huge nerf to AH but that would be good for the profession. It would make more builds valid.

Honor has both health and healing power and symbols are about area control which demands sustain and hence why i think the symbol minors from zeal is more suited there.

Regarding the staff, i feel the same. And even more so after playing my power necro. That staff is just a work of wonder imo and when you have 4 symbols/marks on one weapon its justified to spread out the traits as they have done. I dont know how o fix it since i find it unrealistic that Anet would move all symbols to the staff which would justify todays spread out traits.

I’d really like to see Focused Mind removed and all meditations to be made instant baseline. Half of them are already instant and the ones that aren’t have sub-1s cast times anyway. That said, I can’t actually think of a way to justify using FM over something else.

Brutaly.6257:

Personally i would like both empowering might and elusive power in zeal and have the symbol tratis in zeal to be moved to honor. This would radically improve the value of zeal and make it more suitable for other weapons than scepter/gs. And at the same time make symbolbuilds and area control a very valid option. Sure its a huge nerf to AH but that would be good for the profession. It would make more builds valid.

Honor has both health and healing power and symbols are about area control which demands sustain and hence why i think the symbol minors from zeal is more suited there.

Regarding the staff, i feel the same. And even more so after playing my power necro. That staff is just a work of wonder imo and when you have 4 symbols/marks on one weapon its justified to spread out the traits as they have done. I dont know how o fix it since i find it unrealistic that Anet would move all symbols to the staff which would justify todays spread out traits.

Elusive power is a bit of a tricky one for me. It fits the minors of honor perfectly, but at the same time, has nothing to do with the group mechanics of honor at all. I don’t personally think it would fit well in zeal either, because at that point you would have 20% damage (10 from fiery wrath, 10 from elusive power) in one trait line at any given time. I think just changing elusive power to something else might be a better idea, because honestly what is the point of having a personal damage buff in the group support trait line, other than to boost the already popular AH/EM builds.

As much as I hate it as well, I think you might be right regarding symbol traits. I love the idea of a split between offensive/defensive, but when larger and longer symbols are actually both, it kinda defeats the point of having them in two different trees. Honestly vuln on symbols can be dumped, since the trait was lackluster anyways, move symbolic power down to honor and change it so that when allies stand in symbols they do x% more damage? larger and longer symbols could be merged to make room for this trait as a master level.

There is a lot of wonderful information in this thread. I apologize if I reiterate anything someone else has mentioned.

I remember a guardian stated in a thread that a lot of the professions traits seem just like filler. I would like to extend that further and say that with all professions being able to trait and build outside of what they can do best seems like filler. For this post I want to focus on symbol gameplay with a guardian.

From my previous threads, builds, etc, I show my love of symbols; however, I acknowledge they are a loosing battle. There are better ways to trait and gear then focusing on symbols. But with so many traits and weapons tied to symbols, one can guess that Anet wants symbols to be a focus in guardian gameplay. I do not believe they are their yet.

Just as others have mentioned I see no problem keeping offensive symbol traits in zeal and defensive ones in honor.

I think all the traits need to be improved except for maybe exaltation. I agree that we should move our symbols off some weapons and onto others. Maybe just keep our staff and mace as our main symbol weapons. This will encourage true symbol gameplay. This would be a hard undertaking and with a lot of balancing issues so I do not see this happening in any foreseeable future.

Also, I view symbols as a good opportunity to give us a more condition application such as burning, better vulnerability, and maybe even chill or weakness. Maybe even make a 100% condition duration with conditions applied by symbols trait in the Zeal Line.

For defensive purposes, I’d replace persistence with maybe 100% boon duration on boons that are applied by symbols. For mercy, I think the base healing needs to be higher or have higher healing coefficient or a little of both.

Finally, I think its would be appropriate to change the light field blast/leap finisher to condition removal.

This will create a new kind of gameplay for the guardian that would be up to par with full support builds, AH builds, and Med builds.

The second point in my post which is a quick one, is they really need to fix the useless grandmasters first. Having great grandmaster traits in a tree is what will get people to put points into that tree.

You have to be careful about over-specializing trait lines toward two-handed and one-handed weapons. If you go too far, it limits weapon combinations, which limits variety.

Two-handed weapon specialization does make sense in Honor. Staff and hammer both have many support-oriented abilities and Honor is the group support line. Valor is more for personal survival.

Vulnerability on symbols in Zeal is a perfectly fine mechanic, but the vulnerability applied needs to last considerably longer. I would say 3-4 seconds per application instead of the 1 second now.

Exedore.6320:

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Vulnerability on symbols in Zeal is a perfectly fine mechanic, but the vulnerability applied needs to last considerably longer. I would say 3-4 seconds per application instead of the 1 second now.

Does the vulnerability stack per tick in the symbol?

If it was per tick and using your suggestion, we’d see around 4 stacks every 9-12 seconds and the hammer can consistently keep the vulnerability up. That’d be very helpful for hammer being a support oriented weapon but also being effective at damage.

EDIT: NVM I looked up the info on it. Very cool.

Grants 1 stack of vulnerability lasting 3 seconds and reapplies each pulse (but keep in mind you will have at least +15% condition duration if you have this trait).
Symbol of Protection will apply 2 stacks the first pulse and 1 stack the next 2 pulses (certainly bug because Symbol of Protection hits twice the first pulse : once with the hammer and once with the symbol itself).

The primary problem I have with Guardian traits is the fact that each line is so focused that you can’t strongly benefit in an area. My Mesmer currently uses a 10/10/0/25/25 build focused heavily on Phantasm offense and support. My Phantasms are hard to take down and offer group Regeneration to each other and nearby allies giving me the same survivability. My Necromancer uses a 30/30/0/10/0 build focused heavily on conditions. It yields lots of condition application, heals and cures on kills, and double condition duration (plus more with Scepter) to ensure crowds drop quickly.

My Guardian, however, uses mediocre Valor traits just to take Altruistic Healing. My Honor traits focus on making Symbol of Protection have 100% upkeep while passing off Might to get extra healing. I don’t even need Superior Aria, Purity, or Retributive Armor. I just can’t take anything better. Zeal and Radiance together offer some nice Vulnerability and Blind application, but it’s barely enough to sustain a good build around either. Honor may be the group support tree, but it has nearly every worthwhile trait for group support. Might on crits, healing on evade, area Virtue of Resolve, healing Symbols, etc. You can’t take them all, and you shouldn’t. It would be overpowered. Compared to other professions, you can’t build nearly as strong of a support.

That is why traits need to be moved. Guardians are capable of taking every Spirit Weapon trait and every Symbol trait (examples) to specialize in either category. However, neither are impressive enough to create a solid build around. Instead, we could be taking every Symbol trait to reinforce our Symbols while stacking additional mobbing effects or Boon application to really give Symbols a punch. Spirit Weapons could have additional mechanics to last longer on the battlefield (more health?) to give Guardians a real extra boost in damage or support output (more command uses per summon?).

To reiterate, Guardians lack a strong specialization when putting together traits that other professions have. We fall into a jack-of-all-trades profession that is good at everything, but every profession can surpass any build we create. There are far better bunkers, DPS, CC, and support builds out there; none of which are for the Guardian. That is what I feel needs to happen to the Guardian.

A potentially very worthwhile exercise would be to articulate what each trait line “does” and what the GM traits should be that would make people want to go into the tree.

For extra credit, what are the 3 minor traits that would be flexible or useful enough to make them somewhat forced on people?

A good minor trait setup is something like the 3 in honor (although I think the 15 and 25 pointers should swap places) because everyone can get good use out of them.

An example of fairly weak minors is the zeal line. If you aren’t using a symbol weapon they are nearly useless, and even if you are, they are pretty weak traits (compare 10% symbol damage vs. 10% damage on mobs with conditions).

This is a fantastic thread and I hope Arena Net takes notice of this. Everyone seems to have some really valid points and decent ideas.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Exedore.6320:

…

Vulnerability on symbols in Zeal is a perfectly fine mechanic, but the vulnerability applied needs to last considerably longer. I would say 3-4 seconds per application instead of the 1 second now.

Does the vulnerability stack per tick in the symbol?

If it was per tick and using your suggestion, we’d see around 4 stacks every 9-12 seconds and the hammer can consistently keep the vulnerability up. That’d be very helpful for hammer being a support oriented weapon but also being effective at damage.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Symbolic_Exposure

Currently each application of vulnerability does last for 3 seconds, however that means at any given time only 3 stacks of vulnerability can exist on something per symbol. (even if the symbol is a longer duration, the stacks will slowly fall off just like with the might stacks from EM.) at most, you can have 3 symbols up at a time leading to 9 stacks of vulnerability, but even that would require perfect execution of a casting symbol, switching to GS to use wrath, and then getting knocked below 25% health for Zealot’s speed to activate. Even though symbols are AoE and you could hit 5 people with vulnerability, the amount is almost completely moot due to the low duration and the fact that only 2 weapons can “spam” symbols.

Like Brutaly said, if it was like necro staff where one was up every few seconds, but every other skill on the staff was a symbol too, the traits could make more sense, but right now it is just a weak trait.

Would it be less synergetic or even too linear or boring to condense traits, utilities, and weapons in to certain trait lines? i.e. Symbol traits go in to Honor and no where else. 1h traits in radiance. 2h traits in zeal. boons/virtues in Virtues. Defensive traits in Valor. Healing/Support traits in honor.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Would it be less synergetic or even too linear or boring to condense traits, utilities, and weapons in to certain trait lines? i.e. Symbol traits go in to Honor and no where else. 1h traits in radiance. 2h traits in zeal. boons/virtues in Virtues. Defensive traits in Valor. Healing/Support traits in honor. etc

Not sure if this was meant for me or the other guy, but personally I think that each tree should have some specialization, but also have traits that can effect multiple aspects of gameplay for the class. Mesmer is a good example, Different trait lines have weapon traits, and seem to be more specialized towards that weapon. but there are also traits in multiple trees that effect phantasms, which are on every weapon. Some are more offensive in the more offensive trees, and then others are defensive in the defensive trees.

Another example is warrior, which has sword/GS traits in the same tree, Axe in another, but also has a generic speed increase when using melee weapons trait, that could benefit no matter what trees you are going into. I think we need some sort of specialization per trait line, but also the right amount of generic traits that could make sense to go say, 20 into a line for. Like my suggestion in radiance to add a chance for torment on crit, you could pick up inner fire at 10 for fury when burning, pick up torment on crit at 20, it the traits work well together, but at the same time you are not limited on weapons. If you wanted to specialize though, you could and go the full 30 for RHS. I think that the specialization of a tree really needs to come from the GM traits, where some of the lower ones can be specialized, but other fit into a general context of what the trait line is supposed to be about.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Would it be less synergetic or even too linear or boring to condense traits, utilities, and weapons in to certain trait lines? i.e. Symbol traits go in to Honor and no where else. 1h traits in radiance. 2h traits in zeal. boons/virtues in Virtues. Defensive traits in Valor. Healing/Support traits in honor.

To go with this, to allow more uniqueness, allow us to change the minor traits as well?

Bash.7291:

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Would it be less synergetic or even too linear or boring to condense traits, utilities, and weapons in to certain trait lines? i.e. Symbol traits go in to Honor and no where else. 1h traits in radiance. 2h traits in zeal. boons/virtues in Virtues. Defensive traits in Valor. Healing/Support traits in honor. etc

Not sure if this was meant for me or the other guy, but personally I think that each tree should have some specialization, but also have traits that can effect multiple aspects of gameplay for the class. Mesmer is a good example, Different trait lines have weapon traits, and seem to be more specialized towards that weapon. but there are also traits in multiple trees that effect phantasms, which are on every weapon. Some are more offensive in the more offensive trees, and then others are defensive in the defensive trees.

Another example is warrior, which has sword/GS traits in the same tree, Axe in another, but also has a generic speed increase when using melee weapons trait, that could benefit no matter what trees you are going into. I think we need some sort of specialization per trait line, but also the right amount of generic traits that could make sense to go say, 20 into a line for. Like my suggestion in radiance to add a chance for torment on crit, you could pick up inner fire at 10 for fury when burning, pick up torment on crit at 20, it the traits work well together, but at the same time you are not limited on weapons. If you wanted to specialize though, you could and go the full 30 for RHS. I think that the specialization of a tree really needs to come from the GM traits, where some of the lower ones can be specialized, but other fit into a general context of what the trait line is supposed to be about.

I think maybe what I am digging for is the ability to build, trait, and gear towards whatever I choose from options that Anet has provided for me. More personal touch to my playstyle then having to just accept unchangeable minor traits and what’s available to me. I could just be playing the wrong game lol

I think the best way to achieve that is by making the minor traits more generally useful for multiple types of builds.

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Bash.7291:

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

Would it be less synergetic or even too linear or boring to condense traits, utilities, and weapons in to certain trait lines? i.e. Symbol traits go in to Honor and no where else. 1h traits in radiance. 2h traits in zeal. boons/virtues in Virtues. Defensive traits in Valor. Healing/Support traits in honor. etc

Not sure if this was meant for me or the other guy, but personally I think that each tree should have some specialization, but also have traits that can effect multiple aspects of gameplay for the class. Mesmer is a good example, Different trait lines have weapon traits, and seem to be more specialized towards that weapon. but there are also traits in multiple trees that effect phantasms, which are on every weapon. Some are more offensive in the more offensive trees, and then others are defensive in the defensive trees.

Another example is warrior, which has sword/GS traits in the same tree, Axe in another, but also has a generic speed increase when using melee weapons trait, that could benefit no matter what trees you are going into. I think we need some sort of specialization per trait line, but also the right amount of generic traits that could make sense to go say, 20 into a line for. Like my suggestion in radiance to add a chance for torment on crit, you could pick up inner fire at 10 for fury when burning, pick up torment on crit at 20, it the traits work well together, but at the same time you are not limited on weapons. If you wanted to specialize though, you could and go the full 30 for RHS. I think that the specialization of a tree really needs to come from the GM traits, where some of the lower ones can be specialized, but other fit into a general context of what the trait line is supposed to be about.

I think maybe what I am digging for is the ability to build, trait, and gear towards whatever I choose from options that Anet has provided for me. More personal touch to my playstyle then having to just accept unchangeable minor traits and what’s available to me. I could just be playing the wrong game lol

Yeah, I do not see that happening. the minors are almost all set to focus on one thing, zeal is symbols, radiance is VoJ, and a random GM one, valor is about aegis and blocking, honor is about dodges, and virtues is about… virtues >.> and a random boon GM. overall though they are very cohesive to one another, so I do not see them being able to be switched around at any given point.

Knox.8962:

I think the best way to achieve that is by making the minor traits more generally useful for multiple types of builds.

Honestly, the only one that has minor traits that don’t fit in to all builds would be zeal. Radiance is useful since most guards use VoJ in some form, the valor Aegis traits are nice for a bit of self defense and might on block works well with any source of block such as shelter and focus #5. Honor’s vigor on crit works for any build for extra dodging, along with modifying those dodges to heal/cause you to do extra damage, and the virtue line minors also fit in well because, well people use virtues, and added bonuses to them are welcome. Overall the only trait line that has poor minors for other builds is zeal, because it forces a focus on weapons with symbols, which leaves out all offhands, and 2 1h weapons. And also they have a poor execution for them as well as I mentioned in past posts and in my overview of the traits.

Might of the protector is pretty weak for the investment unless you are running Shelter for your heal.

Courageous Return and virtue of retribution are pretty weak in general.

Those 3, combined with the 3 in zeal, make up 40% of the minors available.

I’ll also say that Renewed Justice is either insanely overpowered or incredibly weak depending on what you are fighting.

I’m not saying that they are bad traits, I just think that they aren’t useful enough across the board to be baked into the trees.

Hopefully the devs will make some changes to the traits soon. A ‘road-map’ would be awesome to have on plans for the Guard. As it stands right now other classes can do what a Guard does, only better.

They’ve said in interviews that Guards aren’t supposed to be able to move around a lot, but defend the ground around them well. What usually happens with a class thats good at holding ground is they can keep enemies fighting near the ground with hard/soft CCs. We have mediocre soft CC right now unless we activate an excessively long CD elite. And even then a warrior can hard CC with a hammer on a 7 second CD. Heres an idea, make the Tomes weapons instead of elites =P

Whats the use of being able to hold ground if you can’t keep someone from just flying away at the drop of a hat (stealth spam, leap spam, low cooldown charges/leaps)? Yes traits need work, and I like most of the suggestions you made, but I’d say their weapons, base HP/armor, lack of buffs to clearly lackluster abilities need work first. Unfortunately for us we aren’t part of the development process.

Bash.7291:

Exedore.6320:

Vulnerability on symbols in Zeal is a perfectly fine mechanic, but the vulnerability applied needs to last considerably longer. I would say 3-4 seconds per application instead of the 1 second now.

Currently each application of vulnerability does last for 3 seconds, however that means at any given time only 3 stacks of vulnerability can exist on something per symbol. (even if the symbol is a longer duration, the stacks will slowly fall off just like with the might stacks from EM.) at most, you can have 3 symbols up at a time leading to 9 stacks of vulnerability, but even that would require perfect execution of a casting symbol, switching to GS to use wrath, and then getting knocked below 25% health for Zealot’s speed to activate. Even though symbols are AoE and you could hit 5 people with vulnerability, the amount is almost completely moot due to the low duration and the fact that only 2 weapons can “spam” symbols.

Like Brutaly said, if it was like necro staff where one was up every few seconds, but every other skill on the staff was a symbol too, the traits could make more sense, but right now it is just a weak trait.

It never seemed to last 3 seconds in practice. But my point was that it needs to last much longer than it does. So lets say it lasted 6 seconds instead of 3. For Symbol of Wrath with 4 ticks, that’s 4% damage for the entire group for 6 seconds every 20 seconds. Averaged out, it’s 1.2% damage per player (6% for a dungeon group), and it doesn’t count condition duration from the zeal line. That wouldn’t be too bad for a 15 point minor trait, at least in PvE. The issue that you run into is group vs. personal benefit and movement in PvP. It’s a big increase for a dungeon group, but it’s not that great for yourself or for a small PvP group. Perhaps it’s better to buff it but make it a major trait so that PvE’ers can take it, but PvP’ers can take something else.

I’d also like to note that we shouldn’t make things like necro staff. Necro staff is in a tough spot to balance because it’s very spammy, but leaves you nothing to do once you spam your marks.